"Our business, nominally the buying of breadstuffs for exportation, was really one of speculation upon the New York market as affected by the European markets,a species of brokerage, which, ostensibly and in the eyes of the world attended by great risk, was really a thing of specifically safe and certain profits, thanks to the telegraphic system, the secret of which we alone possessed.

It is well known, that, at that time, much more than at present, the price of breadstuffs in New York was regulated by the price in Liverpool.